The Equalizer 2 (also promoted as The Equalizer II and EQ2) is a 2018 American vigilante action-thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua. It is the sequel to the 2014 film The Equalizer, which was based on the TV series of the same name, as well as the second installment of The Equalizer trilogy. The film stars Denzel Washington in the lead role, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, and Orson Bean in his final film role. It follows ex-Marine and retired DIA officer Robert McCall as he sets out on a path of revenge after one of his friends is murdered. The film is the fourth collaboration between Washington and Fuqua, following Training Day (2001), The Equalizer (2014), and The Magnificent Seven (2016), and marks the first time Washington has starred in a sequel to one of his films.

Talks of a sequel began seven months prior to the release of the first film. The project was officially announced in April 2015. Filming began in September 2017 and took place in Boston and other areas in Massachusetts.

After taking down Pushkin’s operations[a], Robert McCall works as a driver for Lyft and assists the less fortunate with the help of his close friend and former DIA colleague Susan Plummer. Robert travels to Istanbul to retrieve the kidnapped 9-year-old daughter of bookstore owner Grace Braelick. With the assistance of Susan, Robert gathers information for Sam Rubinstein, an elderly Holocaust survivor looking to recover a painting of his long-dead sister. After Robert returns home to find that his apartment’s courtyard has been vandalized, he accepts an offer from Miles Whittaker, a troubled teen resident with artistic talent, to paint a mural on the walls. Robert also helped one of his passengers, a young woman named Amy, who shows signs of having been drugged and assaulted. He takes Amy to the hospital before returning to brutally beat the men who attacked her.

Susan and DIA officer Dave York, Robert’s former partner, are called to investigate the murder-suicide of an agency affiliate and his wife in Brussels. At their hotel, Susan is accosted in her room and killed during what seems to be a robbery. Robert determines that the expertly delivered fatal knifing means that Susan was targeted and that the murder-suicide was also staged, informing Dave of his findings. During one of his Lyft runs, Robert is attacked by an assassin posing as a passenger. He kills the man and retrieves his mobile phone, discovering Dave’s number on the phone’s call list.